Manners: Who needs them?

Great Debates
21

You’re not supposed to remove your hat in any public space where you do not expect to sit down for an extended length of time. For example, you remove your hat when in a restaurant or a church, but not in a post office, store, bus station or airport terminal (never mind that in the last two instances you may very well be sitting there for a long time :slight_smile: ).

As for how you cut your meat… well, my take on that is that anyone watching you eat that intently is ill-mannered in themselves. Most table manners are to insure that 1) you don’t sicken your fellow diners, or 2) you don’t jumble up the serving so badly that it creates discomfort for your fellow diners or the servers. If you use your dessert fork for the seafood course, you will be left trying to eat your dessert with that teeny seafood fork–or your hostess will have to get up and go find another fork for you. See? It’s just a matter of making things go smoothly so people can concentrate on the company and not on the food.

I’d like to mention that I briefly dated a very good-looking man with a decent sense of humor and a beautiful singing voice because he refused to open car doors for me. Just think of all the great sex he missed out on! :stuck_out_tongue:

Let me address the class issue: you should adjust your manners to fit the company you’re in. My sister’s mother-in-law giving my sister and I a lecture in her home for saying “taties” rather than “potatoes” was one of the most egregious displays of bad manners that I was ever subjected to. My family is working class/farmers. Everybody sits in the kitchen; the parlor is for formal occasions or for the preacher. So if you come to my house, it’s not bad manners for me to entertain you in the kitchen. If your custom is that everybody sits in the living room or family room and that only family goes into the kitchen, it would be bad manners of me to insist on sitting in the kitchen. In my culture, if you come to my home, I would never think not to offer you something to drink or eat. You will accept at least a soda or cup of coffee, even if you don’t drink it. To decline would be to imply that you were somehow “above” what I was offering you.

Eh, I’ve rambled, but my point is that one adjusts one’s manners to fit the company.

22

:smack: I meant that I dumped him because he refused to open car doors. Sigh…

need…more…beer

23

Ah, yes. Because all matters in life are black and white. If you cut your meat wrong, that’s just as great an affront as if you refuse to say please and thank you, show up late to appointments, and insult people to their faces.

I suppose it would only be polite to add :rolleyes: .

24

Yes, but “manners” does not usually succeed in making others comfortable or making living together in a society more pleasant. At least not for me, and I think others.

If I don’t like holding doors open for people behind me, then I won’t. Nobody seems upset at me if I don’t, and I certainly am not upset when someone fails to do so for me. When someone does, I don’t think, “Oh! They’re doing what they’re supposed to do.” I think, “Oh! They’re going out of their way to hold the door for me. That’s very nice.” I’m undecided on the chewing with one’s mouth open issue. I think it’s disgusting. However, that is not enough for me to say it’s wrong. In extreme cases, it may be unsanitary or messy, instead of just unpleasant. I have picked my nose in public, thankyouverymuch, because I was having trouble breathing with the dried snot that was clogging my nostril. You’ll be happy to hear that I didn’t fling that snot at anyone, and washed my hands immediately afterwards. I stand in lines not because it’s mannerly but because that’s how things work - if I didn’t stand in line, I wouldn’t get served. If I pushed my way to the front of the line I’m being abusive to others.

(Ah! The impression you must be getting of me.)

In general, I try to treat people with respect. But that’s not manners, that’s something else, like Chun-Tzu (nobleminded-ness). Manners includes good rules - it also includes some very wrong-headed ones.

When I’m in a restaurant, I am more concerned with conversing with those with me and with eating my own food. I don’t bother paying attention to how others are eating.

Of course, and nowhere have I claimed that it should be otherwise. I do claim that following a rule just because it’s a rule is a pretty piss-poor reason. It’s even worse to think that everyone should follow a rule just because it’s a rule.

I have yet to see any evidence that cutting one’s meat a particular way helps society function smoothly. I’m open-minded though, so if you have such evidence don’t hesitate to show it.

amarinth, thank you for the book suggestions, I’ll see if the library has those.

25

Squish, just think of all the good sex you missed out on because a guy didn’t want to get a negative overreaction if he had held a door for you (it happens).

26

Why msmith537, that comment wasn’t very mannerly of you. :wink:

27

What I don’t understand about all of this is how out of whack some people’s priorities are- you say manners are going downhill, and yet I see people having more respect for others as time goes on: taking your hat off when you enter a building doesn’t mean squat if you insist that “coloreds” drink from a different fountain, standing when a woman enters a room doesn’t mean squat if you refuse to allow that same woman to vote.
Wearing a baseball cap doesn’t make me a bad person, not sticking my pinkie in the air when I drink tea doesn’t make me a bad person.

If y’all want to live in victorian times don’t be surprised when some of us don’t wanna go back.

28

Spelling and grammar errors make one’s point more difficult to grasp. I want my point to be readily graspable. Ergo, I should make an effort to write grammatically correct sentences and use proper spelling. (I should also make an effort to avoid words like graspable.) I make no claim that I do so flawlessly.

I use the word please because: 1) It’s habit. 2) It makes it more likely that someone will read my post sympathetically. 3) It’s one of those manners-rules that I think is a good idea. I have stated several times that not all of them are bad.

And the interstate highway system was designed for the military (as was the Internet).

Why does it generally show no class, other than that you have arbitrarily declared it to be so?

29

I’m confused. Are you agreeing or disagreeing with the sentiment I expressed? :confused:

30

I don’t think anyone would decide not to be your friend becasue you cut your meat the wrong way, or because you used the wrong spoon for the soup, or because you wore your baseball cap while in McDonald’s. (although knowing basic rules about table settings will keep you from using your neighbors plate or running out of forks). You probably won’t lose any friends if you never take off your baseball cap ( although they may not invite you along to any really good restaurants) But you might lose a friend or two by not responding to wedding invitations, and then showing up with an univited companion, in jeans and a baseball cap to a formal wedding. Or accepting one invitation and canceling when a “better offer” comes along.
Back to the hats- I don’t think it was ever considered rude or ill-mannered (odd, maybe) to wear a hat in your own home. Nor do I think it was applied to shopping malls or stores. It was other people’s homes, houses of worship (depending on religion), theatres, auditoriums ,etc that the rule applied to.

As far as manner being “classist”, I suppose that more wealthy people know a fish fork from a fruit fork.That’s easy enough to learn from a book if necessary.But I certainly wouldn’t agree
that wealthy people generally are more polite then poorer people (if anything, it seems to go the other way).

I also recommend the Miss Manners books Here’s an anecdote I’ve seen a few times about real manners ( I think i saw it in Miss Manners, but I’m not certain. At a very formal dinner, the hostess notices one of her guests drinking from his finger bowl. The hostess immediately pcks up her finger bowl and drinks from it. She broke the finger bowl rule, but followed the aim of real manners- she saved her guest embarassment.

31

Well, since he was pursuing me and not the other way 'round, I assume he had much more invested in it that I did.

I’ve had tons of good sex with guys who do open doors. :smiley:

My boyfriend and I were discussing this (he was reading over my shoulder) and his take on it is “well, most guys just don’t happen to think about holding doors open.” I countered with, “Look, if I’m going on a date with a guy, I want to make a good impression on him. I will laugh at his jokes, follow his lead in conversation, not flirt with other guys, not spend too much of his money, etc. I would think that he too would want to make a good impression on me; if I get the feeling that he doesn’t care about making a good impression by treating me extra-nice, it rankles me.”

As my mother always said, “You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar.” A compelling argument for manners, I believe.

Manners, to me, serve two roles. One is to make social interactions as pleasant as possible for all involved. The other is to enhance “the face that we show the world.” Even nowadays, I hear people of both sexes say, “Oh, so-and-so has such nice manners” or is sweet, thoughtful, whatever.

32

This is why I love the Straight Dope. Even in Great Debates you can learn something. :slight_smile:

Squish, in general I think your post was great. I like your point about how it would be ill-mannered to pay close attention to how I eat. I also think your last line, “Eh, I’ve rambled, but my point is that one adjusts one’s manners to fit the company” is a very good point. However …

Aack! I’m not sure I can express my distaste for this statement adequately in English. I wish I knew Klingon, or at least German. ( :wink: ) Not only does this come across as arrogant (“Just think of all the great sex he missed out on!”), it seems remarkably shallow. I suspect that there was more than just a refusal to open car doors involved here. Right?

33

But some women take it as a sign of disrespect when you hold a door for them. I hold a door for anyone who is right behind me, it would be disrespectful to allow a door to slam in their face- giving defference to the “weaker sex” also seems disrespectful to me. If I reach the door first I’ll hold it, if a woman reaches a door ahead of me she should likewise hold it.

Some of the most respectful people I’ve known have atrocious manners- they eat with their hands, sit on the floor, wear baseball caps (omigod, sometimes even indoors)… and yet they have more genuine respect for others than any group of phonies with their pinkies in the air.

34

[quote]
grendel72**

Certainly taking off your hat just because you’ve entered a building doesn’t show respect. However, taking your hat off when I’m sitting behind you in a theatre shows me respect, and taking it off in a church which expects men’s heads to be uncovered shows respect at least to the members.

But manners are going downhill. Sure, it doesn’t show respect to stand when a woman enters a room but not allow her to vote.But who is allowed to vote is not really a question of an individual person’s manners.Perhaps those who are standing are all for women voting. When I invite thirty children to my daughter’s birthday party and only ten respond by the date given, ten more say they’re coming when I call, and two or three bring univited siblings along , that both shows a lack of respect for me and is a reflection of those individual people’s manners.Those are the sort of manners that are going downhill. I really don’t think many people care about the standing when a woman enters, or keeping a hat on when you’re not blocking someone’s view.I doubt even that the woman who was complaining about her husband cutting all of his meat at once would have cared if it was anyone other than her husband.

35

I agree. There are some manners-rules that are good, and some that are bad. I understand that if I showed up at a formal wedding in t-shirt and jeans I might lose a friend (not to mention make an embarassing scene for all involved).

But if I showed up in a tux, and my friend said, “Gasp! You’re wearing socks that are two inches short of the rules according to Big Book of Anal Retentive Weddings*! And your hair is two shades too brown for the second Saturday of the month. Did you think it was Sunday or something? You’ve ruined my day! sob” … well, then I’d be the one ending the friendship.

[sub]*I sometimes think my roommate must have a book like that, the way she goes on about the wedding she’s planning.[/sub]

I’ve heard this one too. When I heard it, it was about the Queen of England. Her guests were Arabs who were not accustomed to there being water on the table that wasn’t for drinking (water being rather scarce in the desert). I think I heard this from a gradeschool teacher, who recounted it to me as fact.

36

It was Queen Victoria, and it was the Shah of Persia. Miss Manners’ guide to excruciatingly correct behavior, p.7.

Go read Miss Manners. The above lists will do fine, or the introduction to Miss Manners saves civilization. You will then be equipped to argue your points more cogently.

I think it’s been stated several times now that to point out someone’s breach of etiquette is itself the worst of bad manners, so I think you can safely leave that scenario out of your posts. :slight_smile:

37

I have always thought as manners as being quite a generic thing - that you show respect for your fellow people. If you know (which, lets face it, most of us do) that eating with your mouth open, then you simply don’t do it. If you know that a lady will appreciate it that you open the door for her, then you do it.

I think when you get to the point of rules for rules sake then I have always thought you are now getting to etiquette (these aren’t exact definitions so please no quoting the dictionary at me). And yes, most of the traditional rules that Blacknight is arguing against were developed by the Victorian middle classes to separate themselves from the lower classes.

I feel that if we follow the above definition (and this will include SOME rules) then the second does seem a little foolish.

Having said that, a rule system does have SOME advantages - it gives you something to fall back on if you are unsure what people want in the above definition. If you do what is generally regarded as correct then, although it may not be what was expected by the particular person or crowd you are with, you at least won’t get stoned to desth for it (hopefull!)

38

I’m all for treating people with respect, but the posters who mentioned baseball hats and hungryman dinners (that was in the original thread) are showing a disgusting amount of classism.

I try to treat others with respect, but when you feel that my choice of hat or TV dinner is just so terribly plebian you have no right to claim to be a better person than I and my friends are.

39

I’d agree some single thing such as using the wrong spoon isn’t going to lose anyone friends. But somebody who’s clueless (elbows on table, eating with mouth open, slurping their soup, reaching over someone else’s plate, etc.) isn’t somebody I want to take to a restaurant where the entrees cost more than $2.99.

Being able to eat graciously in all situations requires practice, as well as just book learning. I have a fear of utensils such as grapefruit spoons and lobster forks, because I don’t use them anywhere near frequently enough to look graceful. To use them in a “well-mannered” way, I’d have to buy them, or use them frequently in public. The fact that I don’t says something about both my weath and my manners. In this sense I agree with BlackKnight, that there are some types of manners that are classist.

It’s true that some wealthy people (as opposed to upper class people, one hopes) are intentionally rude. I remember being dressed in an expensive suit, and having a senior, very expensively dressed woman practically push me into a wall in perfectly uncrowded mall so she didn’t have to take one step out of her way. (I remember several similar incidents in Florida.) In England, on the other hand, at least 20 years ago, people were generally polite. (Even to Americans such as me!) The upper class tended to be extremely polite. Again, manners that are classist.

40

Most of the eating-related rules of manners exist for one reason: to make the act of eating itself unobtrusive. Dining is a social event: the main reason you are there is not to eat, but to converse. Therefore, you are obliged to minimize the distraction your eating behaviors create for your guests.

All the rules of manners can be summarized into two commands: “Seek to avoid causing offense. Do not be easily offended.” It immediately follows that any person who uses another person’s perceived lack of manners as a means to attack them is not being mannerly, because doing is is an attempt to cause offense.

Most men’s hats are such that they impair conversation. They shield much of the face, take up “air space”, and generally make it hard to congregate effectively in an indoor space. Most women’s hats, on the other hand, do not. (Note that a baseball cap is a man’s hat, even when worn by a woman, and should be removed by either sex when entering a building – or when saying the Pledge of Allegiance.)

I believe I have been misinterpreted; I did not assert that manners are an indicator of class. There are individuals of very low social station who none the less have impeccable manners, and persons of high station whose manners are atrocious.